At SCI Greene, a maximum-security prison in Pennsylvania, WVU undergraduate students are learning alongside incarcerated students.
Both groups of students are earning credits, with the incarcerated students working toward an associate degree through a partnership between WVU, Waynesburg University and the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, coordinated by the WVU Higher Education in Prison Initiative.
Katy Ryan, WVU HEPI founding director, said the students take WVU courses, collaboratively studying subjects ranging from criminology and history to math, literature and drama.
Many of the courses are offered under the auspices of the Inside-Out Prison Exchange program, a national initiative for bringing campus-based students and incarcerated students together.
“Students at Greene speak clearly and movingly about what education means to them,” Ryan said. “Education certainly improves outcomes after release, but it also improves the quality of life for people while they are still inside. Students consistently tell us that access to education gives them a sense of hope, purpose, and community. And in turn, they are creating more educational programs that benefit others at the prison.
“Education also gives them something powerful to share with their families. They talk about what they are reading and learning. Many have children who may never have considered college. But when a parent is enrolled in college, it changes the conversation. Suddenly their children begin to think, ‘Maybe I could go to college too.’”
The program at SCI Greene is one of several ways that WVU HEPI works to improve educational access for people who are serving time in Appalachia, according to Ryan, who is also the Eberly Family Professor of Outstanding Teaching at the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences and the founder of the Appalachian Prison Book Project, which for over two decades has been sending books to incarcerated people across six states.
“Since 2019, WVU has offered five Inside-Out courses at SCI Greene, where we currently have 15 incarcerated students earning their associate degrees in professional studies,” Ryan said. “We’ve also brought Inside-Out to the correctional institutions of SCI Fayette in Pennsylvania, FPC Morgantown, and Hazelton Correctional Center in Bruceton Mills, with over 100 on-campus WVU students participating.”
WVU HEPI is currently expanding “student-led initiatives,” proposed and developed by Inside-Out students, that include a book club, a peer-mentoring program and an end-of-life advocacy program training participants to provide compassionate companionship for those nearing death.
The student-led initiatives emerged from classes taught by WVU professors, including sociology professor and former police detective James Nolan.
“Jim’s courses focus on reimagining justice and examining ways to reform or improve the conditions inside prison,” Ryan said. “The students design their own projects, some of which are pitched to prison administrators, approved and ultimately implemented.”
Rayna Momen, WVU HEPI cofounder and program coordinator, said the experience can mean as much for “outside” WVU students as it does for the students behind bars.
“The more they learn from their ‘inside’ peers in the class, the more their perspectives shift,” Momen explained. “We’ve seen examples of students planning to get their law degrees who shifted to a focus on being defense lawyers. Others have gone to graduate school in social work.”
Momen and Ryan’s “big dream” is for HEPI to offer SCI Greene students a pathway to a four-year degree from WVU. They’re optimistic, thanks to the strength of their partnerships.
“The people we work with at SCI Greene have done far more than simply allow us in,” Ryan said. “We consider ourselves incredibly fortunate for the level of support we have received from the deputy superintendent and all our partners there.
“Though it is hard to know when students may be released, it is clear most of them would move heaven and earth to earn their degrees, inside or outside. We would love to be a part of that.”